Track 4 – “38683” – Behind the Song

For Christmas in 2021, my wife bought me a DIY guitar kit that I spent the first couple of months in 2022 building, painting, and setting up. It was my first Fender-style guitar–a Jaguar body shape with a Stratocaster pickup configuration. Once I had upgraded all the components, I had a blues machine. But none of my songs to that point were in that style.

I had been playing with the Younger James Gang from Walnut, MS, in 2021 as well. A handful of songs we played sounded best with an open-A-tuned guitar. One Saturday in February 2022, I was playing that guitar and the rhythm of 38683 came out. In a few minutes the music for the verses, chorus, and breakdown were written (blues rhythms are often straight-forward). That night I wrote the words, and the next day I recorded all the rhythm parts and vocals.

Then came time for the new guitar to shine. I took 3-4 takes, using the guitar to respond to the vocals. That is, I made it a point through most of the song to either sing or play that lead guitar part–not letting them step on each other until the ending solo, where both are ad-libbing at the same time.

This was first released in April 2022, and when I was getting ready to include it in Objects in Mirror, I planned to redo some bits, make it different in some way, etc., but everything just seemed to take away from what it was. So I adjusted some levels between how the instruments sounded but left it pretty much intact. It’s the only one on this album without some noticeable change made.